See update below
The murders of the staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo are the big news of the day. The murders, in Paris, are heinous and wrong and the murderers should be caught and punished. Murder should always be punished, when possible. But only those guilty of murder are guilty of it and those are the only ones who bear any responsibility for the act of murder. Though the use to which this kind of incident is generally put is to blame people based on their identity instead of any act they were involved in or even supported. I've been reading that done on blogs and websites of any number of political persuasions, in the routine on a day like this pseudo-leftists as well as self-declared fascists speak the same language.
But punishing the guilty is no where near enough, or even the most important thing. Merely punishing people after murders have been committed is nowhere near enough of a response. Unfortunately, the more important need of preventing more deaths will not be taken seriously. We know nothing will be learned because the cartoons believed to be what incited the murderers to murder today were, themselves, an example of people choosing to provoke anger in a way that they fully knew could get people killed. The excuse for creating these images is the violence, including deaths, which previous provocative images of that kind produced. I am certain the people at Charlie Hebdo knew they were doing something that could get people killed, though I would expect they didn't really anticipate they would be the ones who got killed.
Most of the people who have gotten killed when Western media companies have purposely provoked the anger of Muslims have been Muslims in Muslim countries. And members of religious minorities in some of those countries, some of them Christians. There is every reason to expect someone is going to get killed when these kinds of cartoons and other intentional provocations are published. So, the people who do that are prepared for people to die as a result of their actions. After a decade of seeing this ritual played out, there is no excuse for someone who works in the media to pretend they don't know how it goes.
Last summer I wrote this about another pointless, provocative act here in the United States:
In one of the idiotic comments, the over-the-top claim is made that what is being done in this case is "akin" to issuing an assassination threat over drawing a cartoon of Muhammad, which it clearly is not. Though that brings us to the fact that no matter how much atheists want to ignore it, the fact is that what offends people is not for them to say. Nor is it for them to say how offended people will be by things they say and do. And it is certainly not within their ability to prevent people from acting on that offense, by voting against the side they believe has intentionally offended them or, in the most extreme case, responding in ways that get people killed.
People on the play left had better get used to the fact that it is not going to convert The United States to atheism or even a form of dereligionized secularism in their political behavior.
I will repeat the part of that which is my point:
no matter how much atheists [or other people] want to ignore it, the fact is that what offends people is not for them to say. Nor is it for them to say how offended people will be by things they say and do. And it is certainly not within their ability to prevent people from acting on that offense, by voting against the side they believe has intentionally offended them or, in the most extreme case, responding in ways that get people killed.
The cartoonists, publishers, etc. who produce these cartoons do so with the full knowledge that people can get killed by what they do. I looked at the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and they are pointless, stupid and intentionally provocative. They are racist and certainly meant as an insult and offense to Muslims, of whom a large number live in France due to its long history of colonization of Muslim countries. The people who produced those cartoons knew they could get someone killed, that was in their power to do, they had no power to keep people who they chose to provoke from killing people, other people, or themselves.
It is one of the few advantages to writing a blog without compensation that there is nothing to lose by telling the truth. I am sure that this post will make a lot of people very angry because it doesn't follow the acceptable ritual for this occasion in which anger and condemnation and an assertion that the crimes were unprovoked because they were an expression of liberté is supposed to make any mention of the fact that they were an intentional provocation which were very likely if not nearly certain to get people killed, unspeakable. Ironic is the fact that pointing that out is to be condemned and subjected to censorship by coercion even as the stupid cartoons will be replicated, themselves further incitements and their production presented as a sacred duty.
Furthermore, the anger that these kinds of pointless Western provocations incite is useful for just those terrorist groups that are believed to have been involved in the murders in Paris today. I doubt Al Qaeda or other Islamist radical groups' recruitment will suffer at all if they are assigned guilt for these killings. They will profit from it far more than anyone else, something which is, in itself, a motive for them to take the bait provided by those who produced those images. I am sure they are just waiting, wringing their hands with glee for the next round of stupid, pointless provocations to provide them with further material for their recruitment.
I am sorry that people got killed at Charlie Hebdo but I am no more sorry than if it had been people killed in a Muslim city by rioting in protest of the cartoons they produced. They could have chosen not to issue pointless provocations, they are the ones who could have prevented murders incited by the insults they issued. I hope someone, somewhere reads this and decides not to issue pointless insults that will get people killed. There are thousands of things that need to be said, what those cartoons said weren't among them.
Update: Juan Cole talks about how Islamist groups use grievance as an organizing and recruiting tool.
Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.
He ended the piece by noting that the French fascists will also take advantage of this and that they, in fact, pose a far greater danger than any fantasy of an Islamist takeover of France.
Most of France will also remain committed to French values of the Rights of Man, which they invented. But an insular and hateful minority will take advantage of this deliberately polarizing atrocity to push their own agenda. Europe’s future depends on whether the Marine LePens are allowed to become mainstream. Extremism thrives on other people’s extremism, and is inexorably defeated by tolerance.
He doesn't take the step of pointing out that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons would serve the purposes of both groups, inciting resentment due to the insulting and bigoted nature of them, intended to offend and predictably generating violence. And also, the support of the hateful content by LePen's side as well as the idiotic defense of them as some kind of flower of enlightened freedom, so generating offense and polarization.
Cole is too polite to point out the role that Charlie Hebdo played in this scenario (though not so polite as to not include a somewhat false and dishonest jab at Christians in his piece) but I think a decade of this kind of incitement of violence though crappy, unfunny, intentionally racist, bigoted and, let it not be fogotten, unfunny cartoons is at least nine years too many of their clear intent to incite going unmentioned. Politeness of that kind even on the day after an incident like this one can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. Politeness that enables the generation of this kind of cyclical violence is the role that liberals, real as well as the phony ones, play in it.
I will have a post about the topic of the idiotic pseudo-left championing hate speech of this kind, even as it plays to the benefit of the fascists and fundamentalists later today.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Notes on This Mornings Post.
When I began this post I typed that the basic facts around the Sullivan decision were ironic in view of the result it has produced. But I don't think irony covers the facts of the case and the decision as they became manifest in the past fifty years.
The decision used the clearly political and racist decisions of Alabama courts in lawsuits brought by public officials criticized in an advertisement placed in
The New York Times by members of the civil rights community. They were appealing for funds to defend The Reverend Martin Luther King jr* from some pretty outrageous charges. At the time the ruling, including its blanket permission of lies told about public officials was hailed as a great step for the civil rights struggle, while it was merely a permission for the media to lie about politicians and, eventually, others. That the decision permitted the intentional lies of far-right media and their wealthy owners and benefactors seems, somehow, to get left out of that consideration.
As it turned out, that ruling, mixed with others promoted by the ACLU, other parts of the "civil liberties" industry and media companies and corporations which often hired them, played out, mostly, to the benefit of the wealthy, who owned or could buy up media, target their economic and political rivals on the left and use the media to totally discredit the very left and, indeed, the civil rights struggle that were the alleged beneficiaries of the ruling. It worked out much better for The New York Times than it did the civil rights struggle. As part of Nixon's misnamed "Southern Strategy" the political plan made by amoral politicians, appealing to racists to the benefit of the Republican Party, the party of those wealthy beneficiaries. who promoted racists and the racism they advocated for their own economic benefit were probably those who benefited the most from being allowed to lie with impunity.
Further rulings of the "civil liberties" sort benefiting the pornography industry facilitated the importation of an Australian-Brit porn merchant, facilitating his taking out citizenship during the Reagan years (direct beneficiaries of the new found freedom of the media to lie) so he could buy media companies here and do what he did in Australia and Britain for their far right. I wonder if the old laws against pornography would have possibly kept him out as an undesirable alien or someone who should not be allowed to own major parts of the American broadcast and cabloid media. It is Rupert Murdoch, using the "civil liberties" and free-press, free speech regime which has done so much to sell lies that have been politically potent as well as a model for other media companies in the United States. Fascist, hate-talk radio is a direct product of the free-speech, free-press rulings of liberal courts of the past, brought by the civil liberties industry, generally on behalf of media organizations**.
For some reason, after seeing a half century of that developing, those are still mistaken as some kind of flower of liberalism though it has nothing to do with the genuine tradition of liberalism in which people are not objects of commerce and commodities but are all equally endowed with rights and moral responsibilities and that lies are evil and dangerous and can be counted on to produce bad results.
The proof of that is the neo-confederates who now control the congress and the very Supreme Court itself and which could, in two short years, control the entire government. As I said, the results of the experiment are in and those are conclusive and absolute. The free speech industry has brought us rule by the neo-confederates. It could have certainly been different if those rulings and that advocacy had been different but it hasn't been. Why it wasn't done that way is worth thinking very hard about, though not nearly as worth thinking about as how to get out of this disaster.
* The ad contained some minor misstatements of facts which opened the door for lawsuits by individuals named in the advertisement. The whole thing could have been avoided by The Times running a correction of the errors in the ad - not to mention by those who placed it and those who accepted it fact checking it, something The Times and reputable newspapers used to be in the business of doing back then, as I recall. The Times was, in fact requested to run a retraction of actual errors by Montgomery Public Safety commissioner, L. B. Sullivan, who maintained he was covered in statements made which included his department. Instead of doing that, The Times wrote him a letter instead of the retraction which could have short-circuited the entire case. The Times must have been advised they could have avoided the lawsuit by a printed retraction, if their not doing that was more than mere hubris, I don't know.
Instead of dealing with it that way, issuing a requirement for a retraction of the false statements and doing what the courts have never had a problem of doing, reducing damages to a dollar if not less, the justices enshrined lies as an emblem of free speech.
** The total cynicism of the Murdoch empire is shown in how, even as its "news" division promotes the creationist-fundamentalist, frequently racist, heresy of pseudo-Christianity, its entertainment arm promotes neo-atheism according to Seth MacFarlane. I don't think that is, actually, ironic in that I see them as being merely different flavors of materialism, the crassly vulgar and the more pretentious sides of it. Together, the neo-atheists and the pseudo-Christians make a very convincing Anti-Christ. That none of that is of benefit to the people on whose behalf The Reverend Martin Luther King jr. struggled, suffered and died is what I'd call evidence that the rejection of his concept of morality leads to predictable results. I don't know how he saw the Sullivan decision at the time but I suspect he would have noted the results in the politics of the period after that and would have, in any case, not believed that the legalization of lies could have resulted in anything else. It was the lies of the same neo-confederates and wealth that made his struggle necessary, after all.
The decision used the clearly political and racist decisions of Alabama courts in lawsuits brought by public officials criticized in an advertisement placed in
The New York Times by members of the civil rights community. They were appealing for funds to defend The Reverend Martin Luther King jr* from some pretty outrageous charges. At the time the ruling, including its blanket permission of lies told about public officials was hailed as a great step for the civil rights struggle, while it was merely a permission for the media to lie about politicians and, eventually, others. That the decision permitted the intentional lies of far-right media and their wealthy owners and benefactors seems, somehow, to get left out of that consideration.
As it turned out, that ruling, mixed with others promoted by the ACLU, other parts of the "civil liberties" industry and media companies and corporations which often hired them, played out, mostly, to the benefit of the wealthy, who owned or could buy up media, target their economic and political rivals on the left and use the media to totally discredit the very left and, indeed, the civil rights struggle that were the alleged beneficiaries of the ruling. It worked out much better for The New York Times than it did the civil rights struggle. As part of Nixon's misnamed "Southern Strategy" the political plan made by amoral politicians, appealing to racists to the benefit of the Republican Party, the party of those wealthy beneficiaries. who promoted racists and the racism they advocated for their own economic benefit were probably those who benefited the most from being allowed to lie with impunity.
Further rulings of the "civil liberties" sort benefiting the pornography industry facilitated the importation of an Australian-Brit porn merchant, facilitating his taking out citizenship during the Reagan years (direct beneficiaries of the new found freedom of the media to lie) so he could buy media companies here and do what he did in Australia and Britain for their far right. I wonder if the old laws against pornography would have possibly kept him out as an undesirable alien or someone who should not be allowed to own major parts of the American broadcast and cabloid media. It is Rupert Murdoch, using the "civil liberties" and free-press, free speech regime which has done so much to sell lies that have been politically potent as well as a model for other media companies in the United States. Fascist, hate-talk radio is a direct product of the free-speech, free-press rulings of liberal courts of the past, brought by the civil liberties industry, generally on behalf of media organizations**.
For some reason, after seeing a half century of that developing, those are still mistaken as some kind of flower of liberalism though it has nothing to do with the genuine tradition of liberalism in which people are not objects of commerce and commodities but are all equally endowed with rights and moral responsibilities and that lies are evil and dangerous and can be counted on to produce bad results.
The proof of that is the neo-confederates who now control the congress and the very Supreme Court itself and which could, in two short years, control the entire government. As I said, the results of the experiment are in and those are conclusive and absolute. The free speech industry has brought us rule by the neo-confederates. It could have certainly been different if those rulings and that advocacy had been different but it hasn't been. Why it wasn't done that way is worth thinking very hard about, though not nearly as worth thinking about as how to get out of this disaster.
* The ad contained some minor misstatements of facts which opened the door for lawsuits by individuals named in the advertisement. The whole thing could have been avoided by The Times running a correction of the errors in the ad - not to mention by those who placed it and those who accepted it fact checking it, something The Times and reputable newspapers used to be in the business of doing back then, as I recall. The Times was, in fact requested to run a retraction of actual errors by Montgomery Public Safety commissioner, L. B. Sullivan, who maintained he was covered in statements made which included his department. Instead of doing that, The Times wrote him a letter instead of the retraction which could have short-circuited the entire case. The Times must have been advised they could have avoided the lawsuit by a printed retraction, if their not doing that was more than mere hubris, I don't know.
Instead of dealing with it that way, issuing a requirement for a retraction of the false statements and doing what the courts have never had a problem of doing, reducing damages to a dollar if not less, the justices enshrined lies as an emblem of free speech.
** The total cynicism of the Murdoch empire is shown in how, even as its "news" division promotes the creationist-fundamentalist, frequently racist, heresy of pseudo-Christianity, its entertainment arm promotes neo-atheism according to Seth MacFarlane. I don't think that is, actually, ironic in that I see them as being merely different flavors of materialism, the crassly vulgar and the more pretentious sides of it. Together, the neo-atheists and the pseudo-Christians make a very convincing Anti-Christ. That none of that is of benefit to the people on whose behalf The Reverend Martin Luther King jr. struggled, suffered and died is what I'd call evidence that the rejection of his concept of morality leads to predictable results. I don't know how he saw the Sullivan decision at the time but I suspect he would have noted the results in the politics of the period after that and would have, in any case, not believed that the legalization of lies could have resulted in anything else. It was the lies of the same neo-confederates and wealth that made his struggle necessary, after all.
Truth Is The Oxygen of Democracy, Lies Are Carbon Monoxide To It, Suffocating As They Are Breathed In
To continue from yesterday, one of the things we learn from the fifty years after the Sullivan ruling was that the truth, indeed, is what will set you free. So the Bible said, and it still is news. And, as it turns out, lies permitted will enslave you. We have run the free absolutist free speech experiment for the past half-century, the results are in, they resulted in Mitch McConnell taking over the Senate and the Republican-fascist regime in the House, a weak, flaccid neo-liberal in the White House who de-powered himself by trying to appeal to Republicans and the Supreme Court under the most corrupt and baldly political control in modern times, now headed by the free speech champion, John Roberts.
Yet the left believes "more speech" of the kind that got us here is what's needed to defeat the lies even as the proof that is a lie is, itself, conclusive. A lie as told by the media and the scribbling class which benefit from that permission. The proof of what their theory of speech results in is embodied in our government fifty years after they made the free lie the law.
You have to wonder what the Supreme Court justices who issued the Sullivan Ruling thought their permission of lies was going to mean for democracy, if they even considered such a trifle as, you know, The Peoples' right to information accurate enough to ensure the possibility of electing a government which would, then, do the will of The People.
The Jeffersonian rationalists, especially the anti-mystical, sciency kind, have a remarkable superstition as to the properties of speech. Their belief that the truth will magically win over even the most heavily financed and promoted lie, repeated over and over again over mass media, is sheerest nonsense. It is magical thinking to pretend that the truth has some automatic potency that a well crafted lie does not have. Lies crafted to deceive using some of the more basic and common weaknesses of human personality , lies enabled by the practical inability and disinclination to to fact check. Truth is often unpleasant, which automatically disadvantages its acceptance as compared to a pleasantly believed-in lie. A liar can construct any number of attractive lies and fantasies, someone who tells the truth is restricted to what is real.
Perhaps the brilliant jurists who adopted that magical thought had it in the back of their mind that we all have a staff of law clerks to do fact checking that or something. Or maybe they believed the academics and journalists who sold them that bilge. Or maybe they went into this knowing the results would be the enablement of the richest of the liars. Or perhaps they were simply naive, an excuse that the sitting Supreme Court Justices have no reason to have after seeing the results of that theory of speech in today's media environment, nothing like that of the late 18th century.
Experience and even the literary record disproves the "more speech" theory beyond any rational doubt. It is such nonsense that its refutation is current even as the superstition it refutes runs in parallel to it. Twain's remark about a lie going half-way round the world before the truth puts its boots on is often repeated but never, in my experience, in regard to the permit the media was given to lie by that decision.
The assertion that you can have legally permitted lies in the mass media and also democracy is a lie. As is the pretense of justices and judges that the legal system they administer is incompetent to sift the lies from the truth. We know that it is a lie they knowingly tell even as they assert it because THAT IS THE BASIC BUSINESS THEIR COURTS ARE ALLEGED TO BE IN, THEY SHOULD TURN IN THEIR ROBES OR STOP BEING SUCH BALD-FACED TWO FACED LIARS ON THAT COUNT RIGHT NOW. If they don't want the burden of telling their college chums and social set that they are lying and to stop it, they should quit so we can replace them with people who value the truth and understand that the truth is the oxygen of democracy, the permission of lies, carbon monoxide that will suffocate it even as it breathes.
I used to consider it ironic how such rulings as the Sullivan Ruling, Buckley vs. Valeo were supported by the ACLU and the "liberal media" as there was every reason to believe that lies and the permission of the rich to duplicate and amplify the lies that favored them in the media, would actually end up destroying the possibility of democracy but I don't consider that ironic, anymore. With a half century of testing their stated theory and its continued assertion I have come to believe that the very people who continue to push the idea must intend the results it has brought and will continue to bring. "More speech" was spoken, it wasn't heard because "Even more lies as payed for per second" won.
The quaint notion that it is wrong to lie, that it is a sin which will lead to evil consequences was one of those things given up as the intelligentsia adopted the pose of being scientific. When the intelligentsia actually were rationalizing their desires with alleged science and hard-cold logic instead of having those inhibited by something so unfashionable and inconvenient as traditional religious morality. That began a lot earlier than this, with the generation of Holmes, at least. Pointing out they were lying even as they asserted what they did is forbidden. Not by law but by the conventions of polite society, the educated class and the pantomime of liberalism we liberals are supposed to abide by. I'm not lying about it anymore.
The last post I did in this series was dark but it's nothing compared to what's starting today, in real life instead of in a blog post. But wallowing in gloom and doom, while having the comfort of involving no work or effort, is also among the biggest reasons the left lost. More about that, tomorrow.
Yet the left believes "more speech" of the kind that got us here is what's needed to defeat the lies even as the proof that is a lie is, itself, conclusive. A lie as told by the media and the scribbling class which benefit from that permission. The proof of what their theory of speech results in is embodied in our government fifty years after they made the free lie the law.
You have to wonder what the Supreme Court justices who issued the Sullivan Ruling thought their permission of lies was going to mean for democracy, if they even considered such a trifle as, you know, The Peoples' right to information accurate enough to ensure the possibility of electing a government which would, then, do the will of The People.
The Jeffersonian rationalists, especially the anti-mystical, sciency kind, have a remarkable superstition as to the properties of speech. Their belief that the truth will magically win over even the most heavily financed and promoted lie, repeated over and over again over mass media, is sheerest nonsense. It is magical thinking to pretend that the truth has some automatic potency that a well crafted lie does not have. Lies crafted to deceive using some of the more basic and common weaknesses of human personality , lies enabled by the practical inability and disinclination to to fact check. Truth is often unpleasant, which automatically disadvantages its acceptance as compared to a pleasantly believed-in lie. A liar can construct any number of attractive lies and fantasies, someone who tells the truth is restricted to what is real.
Perhaps the brilliant jurists who adopted that magical thought had it in the back of their mind that we all have a staff of law clerks to do fact checking that or something. Or maybe they believed the academics and journalists who sold them that bilge. Or maybe they went into this knowing the results would be the enablement of the richest of the liars. Or perhaps they were simply naive, an excuse that the sitting Supreme Court Justices have no reason to have after seeing the results of that theory of speech in today's media environment, nothing like that of the late 18th century.
Experience and even the literary record disproves the "more speech" theory beyond any rational doubt. It is such nonsense that its refutation is current even as the superstition it refutes runs in parallel to it. Twain's remark about a lie going half-way round the world before the truth puts its boots on is often repeated but never, in my experience, in regard to the permit the media was given to lie by that decision.
The assertion that you can have legally permitted lies in the mass media and also democracy is a lie. As is the pretense of justices and judges that the legal system they administer is incompetent to sift the lies from the truth. We know that it is a lie they knowingly tell even as they assert it because THAT IS THE BASIC BUSINESS THEIR COURTS ARE ALLEGED TO BE IN, THEY SHOULD TURN IN THEIR ROBES OR STOP BEING SUCH BALD-FACED TWO FACED LIARS ON THAT COUNT RIGHT NOW. If they don't want the burden of telling their college chums and social set that they are lying and to stop it, they should quit so we can replace them with people who value the truth and understand that the truth is the oxygen of democracy, the permission of lies, carbon monoxide that will suffocate it even as it breathes.
I used to consider it ironic how such rulings as the Sullivan Ruling, Buckley vs. Valeo were supported by the ACLU and the "liberal media" as there was every reason to believe that lies and the permission of the rich to duplicate and amplify the lies that favored them in the media, would actually end up destroying the possibility of democracy but I don't consider that ironic, anymore. With a half century of testing their stated theory and its continued assertion I have come to believe that the very people who continue to push the idea must intend the results it has brought and will continue to bring. "More speech" was spoken, it wasn't heard because "Even more lies as payed for per second" won.
The quaint notion that it is wrong to lie, that it is a sin which will lead to evil consequences was one of those things given up as the intelligentsia adopted the pose of being scientific. When the intelligentsia actually were rationalizing their desires with alleged science and hard-cold logic instead of having those inhibited by something so unfashionable and inconvenient as traditional religious morality. That began a lot earlier than this, with the generation of Holmes, at least. Pointing out they were lying even as they asserted what they did is forbidden. Not by law but by the conventions of polite society, the educated class and the pantomime of liberalism we liberals are supposed to abide by. I'm not lying about it anymore.
The last post I did in this series was dark but it's nothing compared to what's starting today, in real life instead of in a blog post. But wallowing in gloom and doom, while having the comfort of involving no work or effort, is also among the biggest reasons the left lost. More about that, tomorrow.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Webloids: Westbrook Pegler as a Model of the "New Media"
Arthur Berger Chamber Music for 13 Players
1. Variations
2. Fantasy
The Boston Modern Orchestra Project
Gil Rose conductor
The album this is on is great and worth having. The MP4 doesn't do it justice.
Update: Yeah, I know what you mean. Poor Arthur, having to have to settle for performances by the likes of the Julliard Quartet, The BMOP, Gunther Schuller (another performance of this piece).... I mean, The Julliard Qtet ain't The Floor Models.
2. Fantasy
The Boston Modern Orchestra Project
Gil Rose conductor
The album this is on is great and worth having. The MP4 doesn't do it justice.
Update: Yeah, I know what you mean. Poor Arthur, having to have to settle for performances by the likes of the Julliard Quartet, The BMOP, Gunther Schuller (another performance of this piece).... I mean, The Julliard Qtet ain't The Floor Models.
Let Me Guess, A Book Deal And Paid Gigs on the Atheist Lecture Circuit To Follow
Pastor Who Spent A Year Living Without God No Longer Believes
Well I can top that, I spent more than a decade as an agnostic who didn't think about God much at all and I started believing just after I lost my fear of my consciouness disappearing at death. And I would expect I read a hell of a lot more atheist advocacy than this guy did. I would guess I did in the past two year, alone. And I find the more of it I read the less impressed I am with it.
Oh well, that's the difference between an interest group that considers Sam Harris a great scientist, Daniel Dennett a great philosopher, Christopher Hitchens a great humanitarian and political genius and Bill Maher funny and the wide world of religious belief. Among the religious folk I hang with it generally takes years of study and having something to say to get that kind of gig.
Update: Uh, Sims, I've decided to only post about you at my blog for lightwight topics. That's why I put up the Dave Clark Five over there for you and the other Eschatots.
Well I can top that, I spent more than a decade as an agnostic who didn't think about God much at all and I started believing just after I lost my fear of my consciouness disappearing at death. And I would expect I read a hell of a lot more atheist advocacy than this guy did. I would guess I did in the past two year, alone. And I find the more of it I read the less impressed I am with it.
Oh well, that's the difference between an interest group that considers Sam Harris a great scientist, Daniel Dennett a great philosopher, Christopher Hitchens a great humanitarian and political genius and Bill Maher funny and the wide world of religious belief. Among the religious folk I hang with it generally takes years of study and having something to say to get that kind of gig.
Update: Uh, Sims, I've decided to only post about you at my blog for lightwight topics. That's why I put up the Dave Clark Five over there for you and the other Eschatots.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
About The People Who Keep Doing The Same Thing And Insisting That The Next Time Things Will Be Different
It is five days after new years, days away from the Republican-fascist take over the entire Congress, they have the Supreme Court and I read somewhere that the tabloid soothsayers are predicting Jeb Bush will win the presidency in 2016. I'm feeling a lot like it's 1932 and we're in central Europe. And yet, to read the major organs of the left, online, you'd think that we had another election to piss away on the pipe dreams of the snobs who love insulting just that margin of voters who could make all the difference in preventing the total disaster that we are already experiencing. I can tell you, on January 1st, 1964 or, even more so 1965 there is no one who would have predicted what happened in the fifty years between the Johnson landslide and the ensuing half-century of the left losing everything, stupidly, absurdly, arrogantly and, most of all irresponsibly.
1. The left will never win politically until it recovers an entirely unfashionable sense of morality, such things as valuing its core values and their political success more than they do in crouching in in a cowardly insistence that all we want is a level playing field and the theoretical ability to be heard because, you know, 1st amendment. Unless a number of the idols, sacred to the pseudo-left are toppled, things like media deregulation, the permission of the media to lie in support of corporate fascism, it will get worse. The fact is that those are the tools that the Republican-fascists have used to destroy progress and they were handed them by the pudding-headed legal theories of ivy tower liberals of the past.
2. The left will never win politically until we finally dump the pseudo-left, the people who will never win because they care more about reliving some fantasy of the leftist hopeless cause which was never more than a variation of what produced fascism, Nazism, etc. It is an absurd romance about the nonexistent which will never happen. What will have to go? I am sorry, but things like the folks who dutifully attend The Left Forum and those who carry the flame for Emma Goldman and other paragons of impractical, romantic, impossible fantasy futures some of which no rational person with a respect for reality would have ever believed could happen.
3. The left will find any possibility of winning from people more interested in practical success than in any kind of "theory". So, no one who follows George Lakoff or, help us, Peter Singer or (insert the names of scores of other "theorists) will be involved. In fact, any group of individual who brings up theorists and their theories are probably good people to avoid like the plague. They ARE the plague to political success of a real left. Anyone who invokes neo-Darwinism, neo-Marxism, is a neo-Trotskyist or other ist or ism is worse than your regular theorist, they're hopeless true believers in things that are deadly to the left.
4. If the billionaires were going to save the left it would have happened already.
They won't. If any of them wants to prove me wrong, what's keeping them from doing it? Not lack of funds.
5. Move-On, Occupy, The Green Party, "third parties", independent candidates etc. would have produced something by now if they were going to. They won't.
6. And I won't bother with the media, old or "new" and online.
Actually few of these are predictions, as such but I predict that if there is ever a left which succeeds politically, it will be in line with most of the above if not all of it. The left we've got now is just proposing to do more of the same that has gotten us where we are now. They are the embodiment of the people who keep doing the same thing expecting the results to be different.
Update: Someone didn't like me including the media in my list of what won't save us. I will write more on that later today. RMJ comments that maybe we need a good dose of Reinhold Niebuhr. It's an excellent prescription. The great Black Liberation Theologian, James Cone recommended that George W. Bush read The Irony of American History. I think that the left could do with a good, serious reading of it as well. Perhaps I should change the name of my blog to The Irony of Leftist History, which abounds in irony and much more, a basic misunderstanding of the reason for the left to exist and what any real left must consist of and what it can't be and still remain any kind of left which is an alternative to the far right. Ironically, it consists largely of things which the academic and "left" left have left behind as unscientific and unfashionable for things such as Marxism, anarchism, etc. What the "left", which I call the pseudo-left has left behind are things like democracy and, even more basically, moral obligations, without which, equally assumed, the exercise of rights becomes an unequal privilege of those with power at the expense of those without power.
The rejection of moral obligations, equally assumed. are the basis of that abandonment of the real program of the left by the left. And we were led there by those either raised in privilege or those who had privilege as an achievable aspiration. They chose their own "enlightened" self interest over assuming their burden of moral obligations. That is the cross which, if not taken up, the entire program of the left is perverted and turned into a variant on the right, which is also based in a libertarian stand when it comes to the rejection of moral obligations while championing rights, which will, then, be a privilege enjoyed by those with power and their families. The biggest irony of the elite and academic left is that we are now enjoying the fruit of their conception of civil liberties, which was an easy sell to the right because it was never at odds with their self interested program. It was a boon to them.
As an example, it was the sacred ACLU paved the way for the disaster this country is about to enter with its program of civil liberties cases. One of my key insights in the past year came with the fiftieth anniversary of the Sullivan decision, which gave media a permission to lie without any danger to themselves. The primary victim of that were liberals and liberal politicians. It was that great organ of establishment liberalism, the New York Times which contested and won that decision, they bragged about being the ones who got the right to lie established in law. That it was also the New York Times which did so much to lie the United States into invading Iraq as well is hardly a surprise. The generation at the Times who did that grew up and came of age during the era of costless lies that their parent generation bought for them.
That date, fifty years ago, marked the peak of of achievement of the left in the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Acts, major civil rights laws and many other things. As I've recently mentioned, it was a mere four years after that when Richard Nixon, supported by the media, narrowly won the election and began the process of weakening and destroying the real left and its achievements, a process which continues down till today when it is a Democratic president who has constantly talked about putting Social Security and Medicare on the bargaining table. That Medicaid, a program for the weakest and least among us, was already on the table, along with the welfare that the previous Democrat, Bill Clinton traded away while getting NAFTA, only adds to what I've said in this update. There were, of course, other things going on, the war in Vietnam (the Harvard boys war) and the advantage taken by Nixon of the backlash against the civil rights progress. But if the left was not, as well, enabling the privileged and was appealing to and assisting the far larger body of poor and oppressed working people it would have survived and very possibly prevailed. It didn't, but you've heard me on the disaster that conceit and snobbery has brought to us many times before. I am sorry to say it's a topic that is always topical as the best and the brightest seem unable to learn from that enormous mistake.
4. If the billionaires were going to save the left it would have happened already.
They won't. If any of them wants to prove me wrong, what's keeping them from doing it? Not lack of funds.
5. Move-On, Occupy, The Green Party, "third parties", independent candidates etc. would have produced something by now if they were going to. They won't.
6. And I won't bother with the media, old or "new" and online.
Actually few of these are predictions, as such but I predict that if there is ever a left which succeeds politically, it will be in line with most of the above if not all of it. The left we've got now is just proposing to do more of the same that has gotten us where we are now. They are the embodiment of the people who keep doing the same thing expecting the results to be different.
Update: Someone didn't like me including the media in my list of what won't save us. I will write more on that later today. RMJ comments that maybe we need a good dose of Reinhold Niebuhr. It's an excellent prescription. The great Black Liberation Theologian, James Cone recommended that George W. Bush read The Irony of American History. I think that the left could do with a good, serious reading of it as well. Perhaps I should change the name of my blog to The Irony of Leftist History, which abounds in irony and much more, a basic misunderstanding of the reason for the left to exist and what any real left must consist of and what it can't be and still remain any kind of left which is an alternative to the far right. Ironically, it consists largely of things which the academic and "left" left have left behind as unscientific and unfashionable for things such as Marxism, anarchism, etc. What the "left", which I call the pseudo-left has left behind are things like democracy and, even more basically, moral obligations, without which, equally assumed, the exercise of rights becomes an unequal privilege of those with power at the expense of those without power.
The rejection of moral obligations, equally assumed. are the basis of that abandonment of the real program of the left by the left. And we were led there by those either raised in privilege or those who had privilege as an achievable aspiration. They chose their own "enlightened" self interest over assuming their burden of moral obligations. That is the cross which, if not taken up, the entire program of the left is perverted and turned into a variant on the right, which is also based in a libertarian stand when it comes to the rejection of moral obligations while championing rights, which will, then, be a privilege enjoyed by those with power and their families. The biggest irony of the elite and academic left is that we are now enjoying the fruit of their conception of civil liberties, which was an easy sell to the right because it was never at odds with their self interested program. It was a boon to them.
As an example, it was the sacred ACLU paved the way for the disaster this country is about to enter with its program of civil liberties cases. One of my key insights in the past year came with the fiftieth anniversary of the Sullivan decision, which gave media a permission to lie without any danger to themselves. The primary victim of that were liberals and liberal politicians. It was that great organ of establishment liberalism, the New York Times which contested and won that decision, they bragged about being the ones who got the right to lie established in law. That it was also the New York Times which did so much to lie the United States into invading Iraq as well is hardly a surprise. The generation at the Times who did that grew up and came of age during the era of costless lies that their parent generation bought for them.
That date, fifty years ago, marked the peak of of achievement of the left in the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Acts, major civil rights laws and many other things. As I've recently mentioned, it was a mere four years after that when Richard Nixon, supported by the media, narrowly won the election and began the process of weakening and destroying the real left and its achievements, a process which continues down till today when it is a Democratic president who has constantly talked about putting Social Security and Medicare on the bargaining table. That Medicaid, a program for the weakest and least among us, was already on the table, along with the welfare that the previous Democrat, Bill Clinton traded away while getting NAFTA, only adds to what I've said in this update. There were, of course, other things going on, the war in Vietnam (the Harvard boys war) and the advantage taken by Nixon of the backlash against the civil rights progress. But if the left was not, as well, enabling the privileged and was appealing to and assisting the far larger body of poor and oppressed working people it would have survived and very possibly prevailed. It didn't, but you've heard me on the disaster that conceit and snobbery has brought to us many times before. I am sorry to say it's a topic that is always topical as the best and the brightest seem unable to learn from that enormous mistake.
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Charles Mingus - Fables of Faubus
Eric Dolphy - alto saxophone
Ted Curson -trumpet
Dannie Richmond - drums, vocals
It's amazing how big that ensemble sounded. Just the trumpet sounds like a whole brass section.
Update: Someone asked for the words.
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em shoot us!
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em stab us!
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em tar and feather us!
Oh, Lord, no more swastikas!
Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!
Name me someone who's ridiculous, Dannie.
Governor Faubus!
Why is he so sick and ridiculous?
He won't permit integrated schools.
Then he's a fool! Boo! Nazi Fascist supremists!
Boo! Ku Klux Klan (with your Jim Crow plan)
Name me a handful that's ridiculous, Dannie Richmond.
Faubus, Rockefeller, Eisenhower
Why are they so sick and ridiculous?
Two, four, six, eight:
They brainwash and teach you hate.
H-E-L-L-O, Hello.
Jr. High School for Scandal
I would quite happily not mention Duncan Black, who never writes anything worth mentioning, anymore, or the chat room he hosts, a collection of Lady Sneerwells, not a political discussion group, if they'd stop lying about me. I'd happily return the favor of ignoring their existence if they'd do me the favor of ignoring mine and of those other former regulars from the period when he wrote something noteworthy and the place wasn't mostly dedicated to malicious gossip and establishing an adolescent pecking order based on what's kewl with them.
But Atrios ain't hardly no Sheridan - who was courageous enough to fight a duel against a man who defamed his fiance in a newspaper - and his cast of nasty characters are real, as are the people they lie about. And I won't overlook the lie told about me there yesterday, essentially that I support the murdering of gay men when their killers claim that their victim came on to them. If Black won't do something about that kind of thing, I will and he, as the host of the lie, is involved.
I have had the suggestion made before that I adopt Disqus as a comment system here so it will be easier for people to make comments. My reason for not doing that is precisely because I won't host dishonest attacks on other people, at all, and am only interested in addressing those made about me on my terms. Generally when I can get a bit of humor out of them, as yesterday. Sorry, they seldom provide more than the material for a wry smile or an eye roll, they tend to be just stupid and middle brow, when they're not stupid and low brow. Anyway, you're not missing much. Those are the kinds of decisions people make when they do this, whether or not they want to take responsibility for what they host. Duncan Black's pose of hands-off libertarianism has been the vehicle for him hosting the kind of garbage he does but I don't see any reason for anyone who is the recipient of the trash flung at them to agree to his pose of having no responsibility for what he facilitates and provides a platform.
Update: I've read through several of the old, relevant blog threads for the past hour and am kind of shocked at how what was a waste of time back then is an even bigger waste of time now. I also figured out that if you want to be a persona non grata with the groovy group at Baby Blue, you bring up something for discussion instead of head nodding consensus. Thus it was, thus it is even more now. Yeesh, what a way to ruin a life of the mind. I do think I might get some use out of that but unless someone gives me reason to write more about it today I'm leaving it for something that might be useful
Update 2: ErinPDX? That dim dolly is all day job and a bit of back beat in a banal band. A "musician"? Please.
But Atrios ain't hardly no Sheridan - who was courageous enough to fight a duel against a man who defamed his fiance in a newspaper - and his cast of nasty characters are real, as are the people they lie about. And I won't overlook the lie told about me there yesterday, essentially that I support the murdering of gay men when their killers claim that their victim came on to them. If Black won't do something about that kind of thing, I will and he, as the host of the lie, is involved.
I have had the suggestion made before that I adopt Disqus as a comment system here so it will be easier for people to make comments. My reason for not doing that is precisely because I won't host dishonest attacks on other people, at all, and am only interested in addressing those made about me on my terms. Generally when I can get a bit of humor out of them, as yesterday. Sorry, they seldom provide more than the material for a wry smile or an eye roll, they tend to be just stupid and middle brow, when they're not stupid and low brow. Anyway, you're not missing much. Those are the kinds of decisions people make when they do this, whether or not they want to take responsibility for what they host. Duncan Black's pose of hands-off libertarianism has been the vehicle for him hosting the kind of garbage he does but I don't see any reason for anyone who is the recipient of the trash flung at them to agree to his pose of having no responsibility for what he facilitates and provides a platform.
Update: I've read through several of the old, relevant blog threads for the past hour and am kind of shocked at how what was a waste of time back then is an even bigger waste of time now. I also figured out that if you want to be a persona non grata with the groovy group at Baby Blue, you bring up something for discussion instead of head nodding consensus. Thus it was, thus it is even more now. Yeesh, what a way to ruin a life of the mind. I do think I might get some use out of that but unless someone gives me reason to write more about it today I'm leaving it for something that might be useful
Update 2: ErinPDX? That dim dolly is all day job and a bit of back beat in a banal band. A "musician"? Please.
Friday, January 2, 2015
Anita O'Day - Lullaby of the Leaves Mary Lou Williams Don Byas Lullaby of the Leaves
I wouldn't be surprised if M.L.W. did the arrangement, it's good enough to be one of hers. I can't find the band listed.
I think I've posted this recording of her playing with Don Byas before. It's worth repeating.
Update: OK, this is so beautiful I can't help posting Don Byas and MLW playing Why?
Mary Lou Williams - Cloudy
Clearly much of the same material as in her song, What's Your Story Morning Glory.
Anita O'Day - What's Your Story Morning Glory?
Russ Garcia's Orchestra
Update: On Green Dolphin Street
Hate Mail File - Soused and Diss Pissed
Your "threat of a lawsuit" is so ham-handedly and obviously NOT drafted by a lawyer, one who was not in the throes of terminal stage dementia, at least, that I'll just hold on to it for a while. That is unless Orly Taitz has jumped ship and the "left" is, thus, in far more trouble than even I'd feared.
If, though, you would like to send me an item by item list of what I wrote that you object to, oh please, please, PLEASE do. I can imagine turning that into an amusing blog post.
Update: For a start, it helps if the "wronged party" doesn't happen to be dead, dearie. Not to mention having included the "slander" in his own, published, curriculum vitae.
Update 2: Oh, I'm very careful to be able to document any positive statements I make and most of the conditional ones and am always careful to phrase speculation as speculation. And I would have no problem with posting a retraction if any factual misstatements are brought to my attention and demonstrated with valid documentation. I just haven't had to in this case because it is indisputable that V.B. was a member of a group that advocated pedophile rape (there being no such thing as valid consent given by underage children) and that he was associated with those atheist organizations and people as there is every reason to believe they knew what he was about.
Update: For a start, it helps if the "wronged party" doesn't happen to be dead, dearie. Not to mention having included the "slander" in his own, published, curriculum vitae.
Update 2: Oh, I'm very careful to be able to document any positive statements I make and most of the conditional ones and am always careful to phrase speculation as speculation. And I would have no problem with posting a retraction if any factual misstatements are brought to my attention and demonstrated with valid documentation. I just haven't had to in this case because it is indisputable that V.B. was a member of a group that advocated pedophile rape (there being no such thing as valid consent given by underage children) and that he was associated with those atheist organizations and people as there is every reason to believe they knew what he was about.
Hate On The "Left" Today: Alternet Belongs On The Southern Poverty Law Centers' List of Hate Groups See Important Update
One thing I've decided to do this year is continue to point out that such venues of the pseudo-left as Alternet are vehicles of hate just as certainly as such venues of pseudo-Christianity as Focus on the Family are and to advocate that the left dump the haters.
Today's specimen is from one of their in-house haters, Valerie Tarico, 9 Ways the Bible Condones Torture. Which uses a number of texts and interpretations of texts, some of them never taken in the way Tarico presents them. There is this passage from Matthew, never once in my knowledge taken as a command for self-mutilation or acted on as such,
“If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell” (Matthew 18:8-9).
Which is so obviously making the point that the consequences of extremely evil behavior are worse than losing your hand or your eye.
Considering the economic injustice that was, in fact, a major focus of the teachings of Jesus and the fact that it, even today, leads to far worse mutilation of bodies and lives, it is clearly an exaggeration used to make a point. Which you would think was quite supportive of a genuine liberal agenda, as opposed to a program of hate-talk. In fact, I would consider the passage, in the context of the text and the times Jesus said that in make it a strong statement against just that kind of injustice.
When set in the wider context of the chapter in which that passage is set, Matthew 18, Tarico's use of it for her hate-speech is obviously wrong.
Matthew 18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2 And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, 3 and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me; 6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. 7 “Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!
The first thing that come to mind, for me, is the commercial traffic in children, especially for sex, which was as wide-spread a phenomenon during the Roman empire as it is in today's world of pornography, championed by Alternet and such who work for venues of current atheism, such as Prometheus Press.*
It was a normal practice for those who held children in slavery to sell or rent them to pagan temples to be pimped to men who would ritually rape them (the actual focus of several of the bible verses misinterpreted to deal with gay sex), or just plain brothels. Children who survived that torture would, upon losing their attraction to such men, be held as domestic slaves or sold to end their lives in other forms of toil, some of it among the most horrible imaginable.
The rape of children was an absolutely legal and normal thing throughout much of the Mediterranean during the classical period, a part of the everyday reality which Jesus was addressing. If anything the Hebrew tradition he was a part of was remarkable for its relative discouragement of such things. So you have to take that into account as what the people who heard Jesus talking about that, in the context of the text, would have understood him to mean. I'd certainly advocate that it would be better for a child rapist or a pimp who trafficked in children to rapists to cut off their hand or tear out their eye than to do what they do. If I had the time I'd go through the comment threads to see what the congregation of Alternet atheists advocate be done to priestly pedophiles. I will guarantee you that some kind of drastic and painful dismemberment would be advocated. And those would be a group of pedophile rapists who, unlike those pagan ones Jesus was addressing, are in clear violation of both his teachings and the law of the Church which they claim to believe in. Roman and other paganism which practiced child rape could certainly not be accused of banning it. You see, context makes a real difference in understanding what the passage means.
The same chapter continues immediately after the passage cherry-picked and quote-mined by Tarico:
10 “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven. 11 For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.
As an unwilling student who monitors the evil that pornography is, I would compare the hate expressed on Tumblr blogs for the children and the adults who are the "bottoms" in the promotion of pedophile and other rape to compare with those two verses to see what Jesus was really talking about. I have yet to see anything on Alternet or its partners which addresses the most massive body of hate talk against gay children in the world today, pornography.**
You can go on with that chapter to place it in an even wider context to see how Tarico is misrepresenting the text as an advocacy of torture.
12 “What do you think? If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go and search for the one that is straying? 13 If it turns out that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine which have not gone astray. 14 So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish.
15 “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector [For anyone who doesn't remember, Jesus told the equivalent of the Christian Right in his day that prostitutes and tax collectors would get into the kingdom of heaven before they would, to see how un-unforgiving he was] . 18 Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
19 “Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. 20 For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”
21 Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.
So, tell me how you'd make any of that into a policy allowing torture.
Alternet is a venue of hate of a particularly stupid kind, if promoting the political success of the left is their real goal, as it so obviously is not. Their real goal is to promote atheism to a particularly ineffective and hateful bunch of people, their core audience, to promote their online mag. Anything else is clearly secondary as anything associated with their hate speech will not escape damage from that association. The clear fact is that a majority of Americans and Europeans are Christians, even in such countries where Christianity has been so damaged as England. Anti-Christian hate speech is a political liability in national politics as certainly as anti-Jewish hate speech would be in New York State or, even more so, Israel. If they focused their hatred on just Jews instead of mostly on Christians, they'd already be considered the venue of hate they are. The real left doesn't need it, it needs to get shut of it.
* I will remind anyone who has seen me make the point, before, that Vern Bullough, honored by the "Humanists" (read "atheists") as "Humanist of the Year", "Human Sexuality editor" of Prometheus publishers, that atheist propaganda machine, and associate of many of the prominent atheists of that time and today, was, at the same time and publicly, a member of the pro-pedophile group Paidika, dedicated to "normalizing" the rape of children by adult men. His position in that group was as public as his own, self-generated CV but which never, in anything I've researched, gave him the slightest difficulty in his academic life or as a prominent member of CSICOP, the major venue of atheist propaganda at the time. I have yet to see any major organ of atheist media deal honestly with that scandal of atheism or, as I will not cease to mention, the casual and gradually normalized rape of children within online porn - the unregulated dispersal of online porn being another thing championed by Alternet. Of course, if Bullough had been that while being a member of the Christian clergy, his role in the world according to atheism would have been different.
** UPDATE: I am wrong to leave out the even more massive expression of hatred against young girls that almost all of straight porn is. The fact is that any advocacy of pornography and prostitution is an active advocacy for the hatred which is an inevitable and intrinsic aspect of peddling human beings as objects to be used for sex. And it is inevitable that anyone presented as weaker than the male rapists, the customer base for porn and prostitution, will be presented as worthy of hatred, contempt, abuse, torture and murder within the everyday expression of that commerce, all championed by Alternet and its customer base.
.
Today's specimen is from one of their in-house haters, Valerie Tarico, 9 Ways the Bible Condones Torture. Which uses a number of texts and interpretations of texts, some of them never taken in the way Tarico presents them. There is this passage from Matthew, never once in my knowledge taken as a command for self-mutilation or acted on as such,
“If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell” (Matthew 18:8-9).
Which is so obviously making the point that the consequences of extremely evil behavior are worse than losing your hand or your eye.
Considering the economic injustice that was, in fact, a major focus of the teachings of Jesus and the fact that it, even today, leads to far worse mutilation of bodies and lives, it is clearly an exaggeration used to make a point. Which you would think was quite supportive of a genuine liberal agenda, as opposed to a program of hate-talk. In fact, I would consider the passage, in the context of the text and the times Jesus said that in make it a strong statement against just that kind of injustice.
When set in the wider context of the chapter in which that passage is set, Matthew 18, Tarico's use of it for her hate-speech is obviously wrong.
Matthew 18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2 And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, 3 and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me; 6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. 7 “Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!
The first thing that come to mind, for me, is the commercial traffic in children, especially for sex, which was as wide-spread a phenomenon during the Roman empire as it is in today's world of pornography, championed by Alternet and such who work for venues of current atheism, such as Prometheus Press.*
It was a normal practice for those who held children in slavery to sell or rent them to pagan temples to be pimped to men who would ritually rape them (the actual focus of several of the bible verses misinterpreted to deal with gay sex), or just plain brothels. Children who survived that torture would, upon losing their attraction to such men, be held as domestic slaves or sold to end their lives in other forms of toil, some of it among the most horrible imaginable.
The rape of children was an absolutely legal and normal thing throughout much of the Mediterranean during the classical period, a part of the everyday reality which Jesus was addressing. If anything the Hebrew tradition he was a part of was remarkable for its relative discouragement of such things. So you have to take that into account as what the people who heard Jesus talking about that, in the context of the text, would have understood him to mean. I'd certainly advocate that it would be better for a child rapist or a pimp who trafficked in children to rapists to cut off their hand or tear out their eye than to do what they do. If I had the time I'd go through the comment threads to see what the congregation of Alternet atheists advocate be done to priestly pedophiles. I will guarantee you that some kind of drastic and painful dismemberment would be advocated. And those would be a group of pedophile rapists who, unlike those pagan ones Jesus was addressing, are in clear violation of both his teachings and the law of the Church which they claim to believe in. Roman and other paganism which practiced child rape could certainly not be accused of banning it. You see, context makes a real difference in understanding what the passage means.
The same chapter continues immediately after the passage cherry-picked and quote-mined by Tarico:
10 “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven. 11 For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.
As an unwilling student who monitors the evil that pornography is, I would compare the hate expressed on Tumblr blogs for the children and the adults who are the "bottoms" in the promotion of pedophile and other rape to compare with those two verses to see what Jesus was really talking about. I have yet to see anything on Alternet or its partners which addresses the most massive body of hate talk against gay children in the world today, pornography.**
You can go on with that chapter to place it in an even wider context to see how Tarico is misrepresenting the text as an advocacy of torture.
12 “What do you think? If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go and search for the one that is straying? 13 If it turns out that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine which have not gone astray. 14 So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish.
15 “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector [For anyone who doesn't remember, Jesus told the equivalent of the Christian Right in his day that prostitutes and tax collectors would get into the kingdom of heaven before they would, to see how un-unforgiving he was] . 18 Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
19 “Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. 20 For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”
21 Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.
So, tell me how you'd make any of that into a policy allowing torture.
Alternet is a venue of hate of a particularly stupid kind, if promoting the political success of the left is their real goal, as it so obviously is not. Their real goal is to promote atheism to a particularly ineffective and hateful bunch of people, their core audience, to promote their online mag. Anything else is clearly secondary as anything associated with their hate speech will not escape damage from that association. The clear fact is that a majority of Americans and Europeans are Christians, even in such countries where Christianity has been so damaged as England. Anti-Christian hate speech is a political liability in national politics as certainly as anti-Jewish hate speech would be in New York State or, even more so, Israel. If they focused their hatred on just Jews instead of mostly on Christians, they'd already be considered the venue of hate they are. The real left doesn't need it, it needs to get shut of it.
* I will remind anyone who has seen me make the point, before, that Vern Bullough, honored by the "Humanists" (read "atheists") as "Humanist of the Year", "Human Sexuality editor" of Prometheus publishers, that atheist propaganda machine, and associate of many of the prominent atheists of that time and today, was, at the same time and publicly, a member of the pro-pedophile group Paidika, dedicated to "normalizing" the rape of children by adult men. His position in that group was as public as his own, self-generated CV but which never, in anything I've researched, gave him the slightest difficulty in his academic life or as a prominent member of CSICOP, the major venue of atheist propaganda at the time. I have yet to see any major organ of atheist media deal honestly with that scandal of atheism or, as I will not cease to mention, the casual and gradually normalized rape of children within online porn - the unregulated dispersal of online porn being another thing championed by Alternet. Of course, if Bullough had been that while being a member of the Christian clergy, his role in the world according to atheism would have been different.
** UPDATE: I am wrong to leave out the even more massive expression of hatred against young girls that almost all of straight porn is. The fact is that any advocacy of pornography and prostitution is an active advocacy for the hatred which is an inevitable and intrinsic aspect of peddling human beings as objects to be used for sex. And it is inevitable that anyone presented as weaker than the male rapists, the customer base for porn and prostitution, will be presented as worthy of hatred, contempt, abuse, torture and murder within the everyday expression of that commerce, all championed by Alternet and its customer base.
.
Mario Cuomo - Untried Potential
Mario Cuomo is dead, a man I liked and agreed with about most things but who drove me up the wall with his indecision about whether or not he was going to run for president. I'm unaware of him ever explaining his thinking on why he decided as he did, after years of media speculation that he was going to run and many Democrats asserting he was our anointed savior but it lasted long enough for me to yell during one of his many erudite, articulate speeches, "Decide already" at the radio at least a half dozen times.
I doubt there would have been the media speculation if he'd been the governor of another state, New York being the center of national media brings a decided New York focus with it, though perhaps more so then than now. That the sleazy,putrid Rudy Giuliani ever gained national notice is probably an accident of the same geography, I'd guess one that works more for the sleazes than it does for the Mario Cuomos, as, unfortunately, may be tested by the current governor of that state who is decidedly not cut from the same cloth, even as they share half of their genes. So much for the currently fashionable genetic determination of behavior, by the way.
Perhaps Mario Cuomo didn't run because he knew that his ethnicity would be used against him, as it would have been, or his geographic location, as it would not have been even by the New York based media, on behalf of the Republican Party they serve. If a Republican emerges as a viable candidate out of New York, the media would make that origin into a non-issue in exactly the opposite of how they'd play it for a Mario Cuomo. Neither would have been an issue if Giuliani had made it to the Republican nomination, though perhaps his Republican opponents for the nomination would have tried those as well.
It may have been a tragedy for our country and the world that Mario Cuomo didn't become president, he may have ended the Reagan-Bush era earlier and without the neo-liberal messes that the Clinton and Obama administrations have been. He may have revived a genuine liberalism that he probably understood and believed in even as his son proves he doesn't. But we have no way to know that. It is still a disappointment to a lot of us that he didn't choose to test that possibility. He was the last major genuine liberal who may have stood a chance at both getting the nomination and winning. We wait for another one.
I doubt there would have been the media speculation if he'd been the governor of another state, New York being the center of national media brings a decided New York focus with it, though perhaps more so then than now. That the sleazy,putrid Rudy Giuliani ever gained national notice is probably an accident of the same geography, I'd guess one that works more for the sleazes than it does for the Mario Cuomos, as, unfortunately, may be tested by the current governor of that state who is decidedly not cut from the same cloth, even as they share half of their genes. So much for the currently fashionable genetic determination of behavior, by the way.
Perhaps Mario Cuomo didn't run because he knew that his ethnicity would be used against him, as it would have been, or his geographic location, as it would not have been even by the New York based media, on behalf of the Republican Party they serve. If a Republican emerges as a viable candidate out of New York, the media would make that origin into a non-issue in exactly the opposite of how they'd play it for a Mario Cuomo. Neither would have been an issue if Giuliani had made it to the Republican nomination, though perhaps his Republican opponents for the nomination would have tried those as well.
It may have been a tragedy for our country and the world that Mario Cuomo didn't become president, he may have ended the Reagan-Bush era earlier and without the neo-liberal messes that the Clinton and Obama administrations have been. He may have revived a genuine liberalism that he probably understood and believed in even as his son proves he doesn't. But we have no way to know that. It is still a disappointment to a lot of us that he didn't choose to test that possibility. He was the last major genuine liberal who may have stood a chance at both getting the nomination and winning. We wait for another one.
Thursday, January 1, 2015
More Boswell Sisters
Crazy People
What'd You Do To Me
Update: Ah, bunky, there's a whole world of like and dislike that is indifferent to the status of things and attitudes among the stultified kewlified.
A hint for the hintless. The kewl kids who sit on the front step worry about whether or not what they like is kewl with other people and their status by the rule of the kewl. Someone who has opted out of the conformist world of the kewl, the cruel and those who worry about what "roools, man" can like things and music or not like them on their own without worrying about what someone else likes. What we think is impinged on at no point by if something is kewl with you or not. We don't even think of that or if you think what we like is kewl or not. We don't even care when you tell us.
Update 2: Translation: Not even if I were suffocating and they had oxygen in them.
What'd You Do To Me
Update: Ah, bunky, there's a whole world of like and dislike that is indifferent to the status of things and attitudes among the stultified kewlified.
A hint for the hintless. The kewl kids who sit on the front step worry about whether or not what they like is kewl with other people and their status by the rule of the kewl. Someone who has opted out of the conformist world of the kewl, the cruel and those who worry about what "roools, man" can like things and music or not like them on their own without worrying about what someone else likes. What we think is impinged on at no point by if something is kewl with you or not. We don't even think of that or if you think what we like is kewl or not. We don't even care when you tell us.
Update 2: Translation: Not even if I were suffocating and they had oxygen in them.
The Boswell Sisters - The Music Goes Round and Around La Bolduc - Amateur Show
La Bolduc - Gedeon Amateur
My old friend who died last year laughed and laughed when she heard La Bolduc's satire on amateur show performances from the 1930s. She said that song was bound to show up on one that year. I post this in her memory with the Boswell Sister's version, the best one I know.
OK, just one last thing.... and when have you heard those words before?
I remembered this morning that I wrote on that topic before, and probably better. But only because it's early on a holiday and most people won't read blogs today.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
And Now For Something Really Controversial
You might find it surprising to hear me say so, if you know I'm a native of Maine, but there are few things you can do that will get my back up faster than bringing up The Elements of Style, also know as Strunk-White. It starts with the second name, E. B. White, who many call the most prominent of all “Maine authors” was from away. The first thing of his I ever read was a story about the disasters that befell an island family. It embodied his famous style, simple, warm, sentimental, just skirting the cloying. But for a native Mainer it also embodied an amused and patronizing condescension that has plagued my people for as long as we’ve been the subject of reports sent to Boston and New York concerning the manners of the natives*. I don’t like E. B. White.
The matter of style, now, that’s something I don’t like for another reason. I’m not a trained writer. I’ve never really studied the craft of writing. You are getting it pretty close to how I’d say it if someone would let me go on without pulling the talking stick out of my hand. Needless to say, that’s never been allowed to happen in real time. I tried Strunk and spent a lot more time wondering where he came up with his unconditioned pronouncements and dicta on writing than I did in producing specimens as practice. And what might the results be if I’d practiced? Did I really want to write like White, an author I really didn’t see the point of anyway?
Last year I tried again. I got a book, cheap, published by a popular writers magazine and read through it’s advice on simplifying style. It looked mighty familiar and I remembered reading through one of Rudolph Flesch’s books. Which while more detailed and practical than the sage of Yale, wasn’t much less prone to arbitrary advice. I noticed that some of those sentences containing “fewer syllables” weren’t objectively better than the rejected alternatives. The newer book was largely cribbed from Flesch, though at a dollar from the remainders bin, I wasn’t out much.
I turned to technology and found out that the “Grammatik” feature of Word Perfect had tools to analyze your writing based on Flesh’s theories. You could see how your style matched Hemingway or Lincoln. I fail both tests, though I come closer to Lincoln, which is good. If White annoys me, I’ve never gotten Hemingway. It’s not just his homosexual-hysterical machismo, it’s that when you reduce writing to mono-syllables and sentences of five words on adult subjects the results tend to be entirely vapid. I’ve heard endless streams of praise for the Hemingway style, notably more florid than the model, but I’ve heard few people talk about Hemingway moving them deeply. Why he is more respected than Katherine Anne Porter is a complete mystery. I didn’t test my writing against the income tax instructions model, also provided in Grammatik. Income tax instru ...?
If you could last through that rant, you might want to read this column on the hot topic of adverbs. I don’t understand the fuss, considering that adverbs are probably the second most endangered part of speech, after prepositions. They’re being supplanted by adjectives at an alarming rate. Maybe Strunk is to blame. He hated adverbs.
Now! To your corners!
* My favorite Maine author is Ruth Moore, though I’m not from the coast or a New England Yankee. Sanford Phippen, another real Maine author, has written a lot about the colonial aspects of our literary and artistic culture and the way it thwarts native talent.
The matter of style, now, that’s something I don’t like for another reason. I’m not a trained writer. I’ve never really studied the craft of writing. You are getting it pretty close to how I’d say it if someone would let me go on without pulling the talking stick out of my hand. Needless to say, that’s never been allowed to happen in real time. I tried Strunk and spent a lot more time wondering where he came up with his unconditioned pronouncements and dicta on writing than I did in producing specimens as practice. And what might the results be if I’d practiced? Did I really want to write like White, an author I really didn’t see the point of anyway?
Last year I tried again. I got a book, cheap, published by a popular writers magazine and read through it’s advice on simplifying style. It looked mighty familiar and I remembered reading through one of Rudolph Flesch’s books. Which while more detailed and practical than the sage of Yale, wasn’t much less prone to arbitrary advice. I noticed that some of those sentences containing “fewer syllables” weren’t objectively better than the rejected alternatives. The newer book was largely cribbed from Flesch, though at a dollar from the remainders bin, I wasn’t out much.
I turned to technology and found out that the “Grammatik” feature of Word Perfect had tools to analyze your writing based on Flesh’s theories. You could see how your style matched Hemingway or Lincoln. I fail both tests, though I come closer to Lincoln, which is good. If White annoys me, I’ve never gotten Hemingway. It’s not just his homosexual-hysterical machismo, it’s that when you reduce writing to mono-syllables and sentences of five words on adult subjects the results tend to be entirely vapid. I’ve heard endless streams of praise for the Hemingway style, notably more florid than the model, but I’ve heard few people talk about Hemingway moving them deeply. Why he is more respected than Katherine Anne Porter is a complete mystery. I didn’t test my writing against the income tax instructions model, also provided in Grammatik. Income tax instru ...?
If you could last through that rant, you might want to read this column on the hot topic of adverbs. I don’t understand the fuss, considering that adverbs are probably the second most endangered part of speech, after prepositions. They’re being supplanted by adjectives at an alarming rate. Maybe Strunk is to blame. He hated adverbs.
Now! To your corners!
* My favorite Maine author is Ruth Moore, though I’m not from the coast or a New England Yankee. Sanford Phippen, another real Maine author, has written a lot about the colonial aspects of our literary and artistic culture and the way it thwarts native talent.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)